YORBA LINDA : Dusting Off the Nixon Birthplace

President-to-be or not, Richard Nixon had to clean his room. Curators at his museum say his mother, Hannah M. Nixon, was a strict housekeeper who kept a well-maintained home and made sure little Richard did his chores.

Seventy-three years after he left the home, that responsibility now falls to the museum staff, which exercises great caution in the semi-annual cleaning of the presidential birthplace. On Tuesday, staffers used special cotton gloves and soft cloths to dust the house.

“We want it to look as it did when it was used,” said Olivia Anastasiadis, assistant curator of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace.

The piano, the dining table and rocking chair--all original items from Nixon’s childhood home--were carefully dusted with cotton cloth and lemon oil. Feather dusters and chemicals are banned from the two-bedroom house by the curator in charge, for fear the feathers will snag a splinter in the wood or cleaning chemicals will degrade the wood over time.

“Lemon oil sinks in and dissipates naturally,” Anastasiadis said.

Textiles, such as Nixon’s mother’s wedding quilt, require a mesh-covered vacuum.

“The mesh keeps loose threads from being sucked into the vacuum,” which might cause the quilt to unravel, she said.

In all, Anastasiadis estimates staff will take six days to clean the six-room house. Because they do the cleaning work before the museum opens, they don’t expect any disruption in tours, she said.